Attempting to answer the questions about golf you never thought to ask...

Monday, 26 October 2009

Order Of Merit Winners

The European Tour's money list was known as the "Order of Merit" until 2009, when it was replaced with the greatly inferior sounding but much more profitable "Race to Dubai." It's final incarnation was calculated in euro, although around half of the events had prize funds which were fixed in other currencies, mainly British pounds or U.S. dollars. In these instances, the amounts were converted into euro at the exchange rate for the week that the tournament was played. The winner of the Order of Merit received the Harry Vardon Trophy, not to be confused with the Vardon Trophy awarded by the PGA of America.

Before 1975 the Order of Merit was based on a points system, so it was not necessarily headed by the golfer who won the most money - this is a guess but I'm presuming that Peter Oosterhuis was not in favour of the change in format...